Another thing is the admissions because of sports, either thru scholarships or just an easier admission. This has a very corrupting influence on academia and the student body. When I went to Binghamton University in the early 80's, most of the worst behaved people were either the sports or AA admissions students. Food for thought: most Universities on the European Continent do not have any sports teams or clubs at all.

I have yet to read Unz's piece, but I am generally unconvinced by claims that the Ivy League is not meritocratic. (Note: when I talk about scores, I am referring to SAT scores.) First off, legacy admits on average score only slightly below the non-legacy average. Furthermore, while AA admits do score far below the non-AA average, they still only make up around 10% of the student body. Looking at SAT scores at the 25th and 75th percentiles, Ivy League schools blow almost all other schools out of the water. In particular, HYP literally do beat all other schools on this metric, though MIT and Stanford do come close. Taking matters a step further, all members of the Ivy League are both need-blind and give extremely generous need-based aid. Their general rule of thumb is that if your family earns less than 60k per year, you are required to pay nothing beyond the ~5k/yr which you are expected to earn yourself through work study/summer work.

Now, I have talked a great deal about the SAT. You might be quick to exclaim "But rich kids/Asians coach their way to stellar scores on the SAT, so it's not a meritocratic test after all!" In response, I would ask you, "Have you actually reviewed the data on the prevalence and efficacy of SAT prep? Have you really looked through the data tables, or do you just have that impression from reading a blog post here and a news article there?" In reality, all the data show that test prep has a small impact on scores (check out this post http://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/why-chris-hayes-fails/ which includes a few cites). (A great deal of test prep "gains" aren't actually due to test prep at all. Students take the SAT a first time, prep, then take it again. But in the interim, their brains have developed as they have grown older, they have had an additional year of schooling, they are more familiar with the process of taking the SAT, some students just get a bit lucky the second time around, etc.)

I do take issue with many aspects of higher ed, and the Ivy League is not exempt from my criticisms. But as far as I can tell, the Ivy League does a pretty good job of selecting the best students, especially in light of the prevalence of the lefties who feel so uncomfortable when test scores show some doing better than others.

"Food for thought: most Universities on the European Continent do not have any sports teams or clubs at all."

But American universities far outshine them. Except for Oxford, Cambridge, and maybe Sorbonne, nothing Europe has to offer can match the best American universities--indeed not even the best public American universities.

And when it comes to PC, European universities are no less than PC than ours--maybe more so.

Incidentally, sports don't count for much in most elite Ivy League universities, but they happen to be the most politically correct.

Here are two links. You can decide for yourself whether to dots should be connected. The first reveals that Jews, who make up 2% of the national population, make up on average between 25% to 33% of freshmen class at the Ivies. Wow... Asians make up 6% of the national population and barely break 20% of the incoming freshmen and that's including children of East Asia's business and political elite. Double Wow... I didn't know that Jews overachieved at that higher of a rate in college admissions. I know they are over represented in the highest achievements, but even in freshmen admissions at that wide of a margin? We're talking kids here...

By doing some simple arithmetic, one can surmise that Jews account for roughly 50% of White freshmen. Not to shabby for being only 2% of the population. I wonder whether their admissions would be throttled, as Asians are, if Jewish became a racial category.

The second link reveals in picture and ethnic background the President, Provost, and Chancellor of each Ivy League university.

"And when it comes to PC, European universities are no less than PC than ours--maybe more so."

I would tend to disagree (& I'm a UK academic) though it varies by subject. European academics are overtly Marxist, Communist in some countries. But PC as such is an American phenomena, it's in the bones of US academia & general left-liberal culture in a way I don't think you find even in NW Europe, and Catholic Europe is extremely un-PC. British academia has made some efforts to introduce US style PC, but it has been pretty half-hearted IME. And our students, including non-white students, tend to be very hostile to and dismissive of PC IME, whereas many US students internalise it.

Of course our government is a crushing Anarcho-Tyranny and we have not had free speech in practice for at least 12 years, so it's not like we're better off overall.

Now, I have talked a great deal about the SAT. You might be quick to exclaim "But rich kids/Asians coach their way to stellar scores on the SAT, so it's not a meritocratic test after all!" In response, I would ask you, "Have you actually reviewed the data on the prevalence and efficacy of SAT prep?

There's test prep and then there is test prep. Ten days of one-hour sessions is not the same animal as several years of prep. That long-term regimen actually results in task-specific "re-wiring" of parts of the brain.

I'm not exactly fond of this situation and feel it's gaming the system on some level, yet I am unable to suggest a superior alternative.

Really, in the end it all boils down to, "There is no such thing as 'fair'." Same deal with politics and many facets of life.

Looking at SAT scores at the 25th and 75th percentiles, Ivy League schools blow almost all other schools out of the water.

Well that is a convenient way to look at it, but if you consider the score difference between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile, it is still a wide enough gap to suggest that something is going on. How many tens of thousands of students across the country, who may be in the 10th percentile in their own university would have scores that would place them in the 50% percentile or higher in the Ivies?

I haven't read the article, but I had no problem getting into Harvard as a white middle class male. So do Ron Unz! I just had excellent test scores, as did he. That path is wide open to Asians as well.

Oh boo hoo, you need to get somewhat higher scores than other groups. Should have studied harder. Listen to High Expectations Asian Father:http://highexpectationsasianfather.tumblr.com/

You could eliminate all AA and you'd only free up about 10% of the class. Athlete admissions have their own benefits, as do letting in a few children of the very rich.

Personally, I didn't mind have some really rich classmates. They had some great vacation homes with lots of spare bedrooms for me!

Also, if their parents are giving big money to the school, less tuition for me. Indeed, Harvard now provides full scholarships to students with parternal incomes below $70,000, and close to full scholarships going well past $100,000.

"Another thing is the admissions because of sports, either thru scholarships or just an easier admission."

If part of the college package is connections, you should want some athletes in the mix, even if their academic ability is slightly lower than the rest. College athletes often go on to successful careers in business.

Regarding legacy admissions, they seemed to be just as smart as the rest of the class. And believe me, I was quite ready to believe otherwise and feel intellectually superior to them!

Look at it this way. The average Harvard graduate has 2 kids. The average class is 15% legacy. That means that for a class of 1000 graduates, there are about 2000 potential legacy admits, but 150 actual legacy admits. So in a given year, Harvard is admitting about 7.5% of the cohort of potential legacy admits. And this is of a pool that is pretty smart to begin with. So they can be plenty choosy!

How many tens of thousands of students across the country, who may be in the 10th percentile in their own university would have scores that would place them in the 50% percentile or higher in the Ivies?

Oh my... I meant 90% percentile and not 10th percentile. And hundreds of thousands of students, not tens of thouseands.

The point about Jewish overrepresentation in the Ivy League is about absolute numbers.Yes the Jewish demographic has a higher IQ at 115 to the Goyishe Kop 100 but Jewish people are only 2% of the population so you have 6 million Jewish people vying with 200 million white goys for admission to the Ivy League and future control of the levers of power. That is a 33 times larger Bell curve so the right tail of the dumb goys’ Bell curve is still larger than the Jewish Bell curve at IQ levels of 130 and 145. According to the last paragraph below there are seven times and over four times more dumb goys at IQ of 130 and 145 so why the equality of representation in the Ivy Leagues? Maybe Ron will tell us when his article becomes available.

Kevin Macdonald said, “In a 1998 op-ed (”Some minorities are more minor than others”), Ron Unz pointed out “Asians comprise between 2% and 3% of the U.S. population, but nearly 20% of Harvard undergraduates. Then too, between a quarter and a third of Harvard students identify themselves as Jewish, while Jews also represent just 2% to 3% of the overall population. Thus, it appears that Jews and Asians constitute approximately half of Harvard’s student body, leaving the other half for the remaining 95% of America” (See also Edmund Connelly’s take.) A 2009 article in the Daily Princetonian (“Choosing the Chosen People”) cited data from Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, that with the exception of Princeton and Dartmouth, on average Jews made up 24% of Ivy League undergrads. (Princeton had only 13% Jews, leading to much anxiety and a drive to recruit more Jewish students. The rabbi leading the campaign said she “would love 20 percent”—an increase from over 6 times the Jewish percentage in the population to around 10 times.)Jews therefore constitute a vastly disproportionate share of the population classified as White at elite universities. Data from an earlier study by Espenshade show that around half of the students at elite universities are classified as White, suggesting that Jews and non-Jews classified as White are approximately equal in numbers. (Given that students from the Middle East are also classified as White, there is the suggestion that Jews outnumber non-Jewish students of Christian European descent.)One might simply suppose that this is due to higher Jewish IQ. However, on the basis of Richard Lynn’s estimates of Ashkenazi Jewish IQ and correcting for the greater numbers of European Whites, the ratio of non-Jewish Whites to Jews should be around 7 to 1 (IQ >130) or 4.5 to 1 (IQ > 145). Instead, the ratio of non-Jewish Whites to Jews is around 1 to 1 or less. (See here.)

There's been a lot of talk about how the republicans can come back, but policies like these that actually make a real change in Americans' lives (aka citizenism) and have positive knock on effects for society- we're all a little better off with fewer poor people- are a real way back to power.

"Look what I found:http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/meritocracy-appendices/?print=1"

Reading this, Unz concludes that currently white gentiles perform the best once admitted to Harvard, Asians next, and Jews by far the worst. On the other hand Jews are the most overrepresented relative to national level of ability, Asians next and white gentiles most underrepresented.

If Harvard wants to groom and educate the best future elite they need to completely revamp their admission procedures

"But American universities far outshine them. Except for Oxford, Cambridge, and maybe Sorbonne, nothing Europe has to offer can match the best American universities--indeed not even the best public American universities."

This is only partially true. Yes, the top 5% universities in the World are all American. This despite the fact that Europe far surpasses America in overall cultural, artistic, conceptual and hard sciences achievements. It just so happens that at the end of WWII the U.S emerged as the World's foremost economic superpower, and with money comes the ability to build huge academic infra-structure which attracts the best brains and to pay the highest salaries for university professors. America caused a huge brain-drain from Europe in the late 1940s. The two greatest scientific/technological accomplishments of America in the 20th century were the atomic bomb and the lending on the Moon, and most of the scientists who worked on both projects were Europeans by birth. Most of the top rocket scientists on the Apollo Project were Germans by birth, brough to the U.S at the end of WWII by Project Paperclip.

But your statements about average colleges do not ring true. I would have to say that there are more decent universities in Europe than in America. The average American college is atrocious, focusing on post-modern humanities studies, marketing or B.A and they are dfinitely easier to get into than the average European college. Teh reason for this is that only smart people go to college in Europe. The French and the Germans do not send their dumb kids to college. The kids who go to college in Europe are teacher's pets who sit on the front row in class and pester the teachers with questions all the tmes. The Germans consider the idea that all kids should go through hiher education ridiculous. They have produced innumerable geniuses, but they do not have the delusion that their average "kinder" are geniuses. They believe that you should find out your kind of ability and level of ability and study and maximize it to the utmost. Go ask a German math teacher if he believes that any pupil can become the next Gauss by just dedicating themselves to it. A ridiculous idea. They focus on teaching dull kinder basic arithmatic and making them really good at it, which is what you use mostly in daily life anyway. I have a PhD in chemical engineering and 95%+ of the math I use is arithmatic. I never use Algebra, and when I use calculus - which I have to -, I have computers doing more than 90% of the brute work for me. If mostly arithmatic is good enough for a PhD chemist, I reckon it is good enough for the average person that will go straight from high school to work. BUT! you do need to learn this shit.

"Anonymous said... Looking at SAT scores at the 25th and 75th percentiles, Ivy League schools blow almost all other schools out of the water. In particular, HYP literally do beat all other schools on this metric, though MIT and Stanford do come close."

-On verbal, perhaps. Not on math. And did you look at Cal Tech at all?

"The point about Jewish overrepresentation in the Ivy League is about absolute numbers.Yes the Jewish demographic has a higher IQ at 115 to the Goyishe Kop 100 but Jewish people are only 2% of the population so you have 6 million Jewish people vying with 200 million white goys for admission to the Ivy League and future control of the levers of power. That is a 33 times larger Bell curve so the right tail of the dumb goys’ Bell curve is still larger than the Jewish Bell curve at IQ levels of 130 and 145. According to the last paragraph below there are seven times and over four times more dumb goys at IQ of 130 and 145 so why the equality of representation in the Ivy Leagues? Maybe Ron will tell us when his article becomes available."

I, and I'm sure a lot of other people have thought the same thing. It's pretty easy to take bell curves and population figures and say there should be so many people of this ethnicity in this IQ range and so forth.

But you run into a problem at this point. What fraction of white americans stress academics? As opposed to being "well rounded," or giving huge attaboys to a kid that plays football or baseball?

I've read on this site that Asians, despite being a smaller population, are totally blowing Jewish people out of the water at being admitted to "elite" high schools in New York (Hunter High? some name like that).

Seriously, I think we all know the family whose kid is out in the driveway shooting buckets over and over. We all know the kid that is totally into baseball, and does all the summer camps, weightlifting, and works at baseball year round.

We all know the kid who kind of Mehs at school and sits around playing the guitar 24/7. We all know the kid who plays video games 24/7.

But how many of us know the kids (white) who approach academics the way the "Tiger Mom" kids do? How often do you see this?

The thing is that if a group of people (asians, to a lesser extent jews) do this, then they are just plain going to dominate the kind of academic achievement that gets you into elite colleges.

There are some white people who are into academics, but without going into details I'd wager a guess you could derive their ratio by looking at the number of whites at elite schools, and dividing it to the total white population.

I've come to a couple of conclusions, personally.

1) The current American system is set up to benefit graduates of a small number of colleges and universities in this country. Certain doors do no open up for you if you do no t attend one of these.

My take on things is that elite schools are the gatekeepers of elite money and the reins of power.

2) Sports is a total waste of time, even for health. Obviously exercise is important, but there are a lot more efficient ways to do it, than taking part in one of the big American sports.

Look, what do you get if you put your all into sports? Statistically speaking not much. The number of people who get an appreciable financial reward for all that effort is vanishingly small.

Take football. Very few kids who ever play in high school are going to make the NFL. Of those that do, few are going to get the mega contracts. An average career of 3 to 5 years with an average pay of oh, say 700,000 really isn't that much.

Being a big noise in high school may feel good. But 10 years later when you go to the high school reunion, your knees are blown, you are out of the NFL, and don't know what comes next.

Meanwhile that Asian kid that nobody paid much attention too has just pulled 200 million from a deal on Wall Street. Or maybe he got stock options from a startup in the Valley. Or he is way in debt, and about to start his residency in Internal Medicine.

Just saying the culture of white people prioritizes things that aren't very useful.

Why should they expect results any different from what they are getting?

Excelling in these kind of contests is partly brains and mostly a willingness to put in the necessary 10,000 hours of training. American Jews have not suddenly become stupid but they have lost that kind of sitzfleisch. They have also realized that the path to power in America does not pass thru the doors of the Math Olympiad or other such dorky contest. Only an immigrant's kids (and most of the Asians are 1st generation - my kids have many friends from this group and every single one has foreign born parents) thinks that study is what gets you out of a lifetime in the restaurant kitchens or dry cleaners where your parents work and into a lab or doctor's office.

"Look what I found:http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/meritocracy-appendices/?print=1"

Reading this, Unz concludes that currently white gentiles perform the best once admitted to Harvard, Asians next, and Jews by far the worst. On the other hand Jews are the most overrepresented relative to national level of ability, Asians next and white gentiles most underrepresented.

If Harvard wants to groom and educate the best future elite they need to completely revamp their admission procedures

Robert Hume__________________

I read the article and I'm not surprised that whites would perform the best.

Unz batted away the most oft-cited excuse for Jewish overrepresentation: they're just so highly gifted.

This was mostly true until the 90's and has gotten worse since. Not that it is even really a bad thing, I believe. What was anomalous was the extreme genius of the mid-to-late 20th century. Unz noticed that similar over-achievement can be seen in recent Asian waves; the Japanese, who have been here longer, are represented more in accordance with their actual numbers. Even the few Japanese who were National Merit scholars tended to have traditional, rather than Americanized, names suggesting recent arrivals.

Unz's findings help put the Space Age in a new light: the combination of highly intelligent whites with Jews at their peak. They also explain Eli Roth...

It may be that part of the explanation for the discrepancy is that Asians and Jews are more status conscious and so pick the Ivies. Pay more attention to the elite liberal arts schools, some of which compare well with the Ivies in terms of admit stats, if I remember correctly.

Every single counterpoint brought up was dealt with by Ron Unz. These points have been around forever and are well known.

Profound bias against non-Jewish whites by Jews is the reason why they are so under-represented at the Ivies.

You will have to wait for the article to come out.

Hume brought up a point not in the article that is being ignored: Whites overperform once at the Ivies while Jews underperform.

Conservatives easily understand, in the context of affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics, that underperformance indicates these students are misplaced.Well, it's the same thing here.

We have a mental image of the average a.a. student being Michelle Obama, when that reality has changed. Unz uses a real life Jewish-American princess to illustrate the new reality of affirmative action.

"I've read on this site that Asians, despite being a smaller population, are totally blowing Jewish people out of the water at being admitted to 'elite' high schools in New York (Hunter High? some name like that)."

As herdish-followers, Asians are good at institutional climbing, and so they do what is necessary to make it to good schools. But eventually, all great achievers must think outside the box and succeed as individuals, and this where Asians lose to Jews. Not very good at individual climbing.

"As herdish-followers, Asians are good at institutional climbing, and so they do what is necessary to make it to good schools. But eventually, all great achievers must think outside the box and succeed as individuals, and this where Asians lose to Jews. Not very good at individual climbing."

Your first statement is critical of Asians, and I'll say something about that in a minute.

But I'd like to say that my contention is "Asians are good at institutional climbing, and so they do what is necessary to make it to good schools." is the key factor in how successful you are in today's America.

I think we have a dichotomy in how we think. In my experience I have seen astronomical differences in work conditions and compensation at different jobs I've worked. What I think I observed was that the base intelligence and knowledge seemed the same, and the kinds of things individuals did seemed the same.

But put HP on the building, and put Bud's Networking Services (serving Peoria for over 10 years) on the building, and you see two different outcomes in how life is lived.

Now, I have run across the attitude you expressed in your first statement over and over in my life. I am here to tell you that Asians are not some Von Neumann automata that exist to mindlessly memorize information and spit it out on tests.

I'm not going to google it up, but I just read an article about a Chinese company starting to manufacture a chip to replace intel chips in servers (CPU stuff).

Usual pooh poohing, it's only servers, they don't have Intel's expertise, Yada, Yada, Yada. Why they even say they will lose money making this chip, which probably is correct, but that's not the point. (Got to start somewhere)

I've seen this show before, and I know how it ends. No one will hold my feet to the fire, because no one is going to mark my words if it doesn't come true.

But the Silicon Valley money machine is doomed. Most of what they do is going to be done in China in 20 years.

Pretty good for a bunch of robots, but no one is asking me. There are a lot of factors besides base intelligence going into it, but this post is too long already.

There is a social phenom called nouveau riche. The newly rich feel they have finally arrived and are so eager to show it off, and so they go for conspicuous displays of their wealth. We can see this especially among uncouth rags-to-riches Russian rich who put on lavish weddings and whose women wear fur coats--when such isn't even fashionable.

Similarly, a kind of 'nouveau smarte' phenom may be taking place among some Asians. As relative new arrivals in the US--at least for those who came since 1965--, they feel this need to show off that their kids are smart, and so Asian-Indian kids are pushed into spelling bees and Chinese kids are pushed into mathletics. But such conspicuous displays of smarts are looked down upon by the established smart groups. They look upon that sort of thing as vulgar and crude, rather like bumper stickers that say, "MY KID IS SO SMART AND GOT STRAIGHT A's AND IS GOING TO HARVARD!!!!"

"Jews I grew up with took education seriously but laughed at stuff like spelling bees and math contests as dog-and-pony shows."

This wouldn't explain the National Merit Scholar finalists of whom 6% are Jews. I don't have the figures for past NMS performance, but the 6% seems in line with the Science Talent Search finalists (7%, was 23% in the '80s), and the U.S. Physics Olympiad winners (5%, 28% in the '80s). By every measure, there has been a substantial drop-off in talent and it seems reasonable that the NMS finalists would show this, too. 6% is not shabby as they are extremely overrepresented, but this doesn't explain getting, on average, 23% of the slots at Ivies. Being unfairly advantaged would explain why they don't do as well once they are there.

There is no justification for such overrepresentation of Jews at the Ivies. Once there was, but no more.He believes this is the inverse of the situation in the 20s-30s and that subconscious biases are at work and that it isn't nefarious (Unz being Unz, though, he has a naughty little supplement).

He revisits his theory here of the malleability of IQ while positing that Jewish wordsum-derived IQ is 109, but that Americans of English, Welsh, Scottish, Swedish, and Catholic Irish ancestry average 104 while whites in the Episcopal church exceeded Jews. Given the nature of wordsum, these two groups would be closer still. Unz also notes the demographic trends within the Jewish community vis a vis secularism versus ultra-orthadox.

Unz highlighted the work of Nathaniel Weyl in his 1966 book The Creative Elite to note other collapses: Puritan descendants around 1900, the Scottish contribution to British life after about 1800.

It's all interesting and is why I often read his articles at least once, but the point remains.

"Looking at SAT scores at the 25th and 75th percentiles, Ivy League schools blow almost all other schools out of the water. In particular, HYP literally do beat all other schools on this metric."

Not true, particular on math score. MIT 25/75 on math is 740/800, which is higher than any Ivy including HYP. Cal Tech is 760/800 (less AA at Cal Tech). And keep in mind that since the SAT was "recentered", there is a sharp drop off at the right tail - the difference between 800 and 760 may be 1 or 2 wrong answers.

What is particularly telling at the Ivies is the 25th percentile score, especially in reading. These scores are in the low 600s at the "lesser" Ivies such as Brown and Cornell (and that must mean that at the very bottom of the class you have people in the 500s). Any respectable flagship state university has tons of students in this range. Such students may not have the money or desire to attend an Ivy nor the savvy to navigate the admissions system with the "right" package of essays, extracurriculars, etc.

The bell curve is fractal in nature - it repeats itself over and over within each subgroup on an increasingly smaller scale. I was recently surprised to learn that MIT has no fewer than 4 versions of its mandatory Freshman physics course. And WITHIN each class there is a curve - even in the honors physics course, exam score ranges from the high 90s to the low 20s. There is a VAST span of talent from the most talented MIT student (or any other Ivy student) to the least. Really super duper geniuses (people with IQ above say 150) are exceedingly rare - there just aren't enough of them to fill up the Ivies plus MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, etc. Even if they got rid of all the AA deadweight, legacy admits, athletes, etc. there is a limited pool of these people to be split up among the top 20 or 50 institutions. All that would happen is that brightest of the bright would bunch up even more at the top 5 or 10 schools. There are "horror" stories of the bright but nerdy (usually Asian) kid with 2400 SATs who doesn't get into a single Ivy. He (or she) doesn't end up in Kommunity Kollege - instead he gets into a Carnegie Mellon or a Renssalaer or his state university which is glad to have him and where he will get a fine education - not a fate worse than death.

"Bingo. Jews I grew up with took education seriously but laughed at stuff like spelling bees and math contests as dog-and-pony shows."

Most high achievers never won some kind of prize in their school yrs. Think of Jobs, Ellison, Gates, Zuckerberg, Wozniak, and etc. I highly doubted if they bothered with 'contests'. They were too busy doing their own stuff.

All these contests are like American Idol. They don't determine who will be the Real stars.

Something tells me--though I could be wrong--that Ivy League universities tend to be a bit heavy in AA at the undergraduate level to show that they are politically correct and into diversity, but it may much less so at the graduate level. Not every Ivy league undergraduate makes it to Ivy League graduate school whereas a good number of non-Ivy League graduates make it to Ivy League graduate schools.

I've known people who went to public universities at the undergrad level but then made it to Ivy league at the graduate level. Undergrad level isn't all that serious; it's not where the real research and studies are done. If anything, Ivy League undergraduate schools serve as a filter in weeding out those who can't really make the grade. Those who aren't smart won't make it to Ivy league graduate schools--especially in hard sciences and more intellectually demanding areas--, and so, Ivy League graduate school slots will open up to really smart graduates of non-Ivy League colleges.

"Score 150 on an IQ test? Come here. We have a four year ride for you, no questions asked, no need to play the tuba or be the lead in Grease. We don't even really care what your high school grades are. If you flunk out, you flunk out. Major in what you want, do what you want. Just follow your muse and let's see what that sweet, sweet IQ does.

We absolutely do not care about your ethnicity. If we get all whites, fine. All Asians, fine. All Jews, fine. Any combo thereof, fine."

Considering that a major college football team has 85 full ride scholarship students, and a truly massive tail to go along with that. It's a revenue stream, but most Universities lose money on athletics. Rolling the dice on kids like this and what they might produce seems like it might be more lucrative in the long run.

Maybe Amy Chua rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with her 'nouveau smarte' antics. The kind of people she hangs around with are just as committed to driving their kids to succeed, BUT they don't wanna seem so vulgar, loud, and show-offy about it. So, they pretend that they are only trying to be supportive of their kids--though, in fact, they push pretty hard. Chua, in contrast, committed the faux pas of explicitly declaring what her plans were for her kids. You're supposed to speak softly and carry a big stick, not loudly tell everyone that you got a big stick.

Somewhat OT, but one thing that stands out about both Asians and Jews, is that they are far under-represented in both entrepreneurial activities, Mark Zuckerberg being the exception not the rule, and garage style tinkering.

My guess is that both groups like/need formalized, structured environments, not out-there-on-your own individualistic environments. I think that goes back to the social structure of Asian/Jews and the Scots-Irish Gaelic peoples.

For Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) and ghetto-derived Jews from places like Poland and Russia, fellow co-ethnics were support not threat. While for Scots-Irish they were both. Hence a far greater premium on individuality, distrust of institutions, and desire for individually standing out by personal achievement.

Asians and Jews are interested in being part of and running places like Harvard and Yale. The Gaelic peoples would rather just ignore them or tear them down, finding them utterly alien.

"instead he gets into a Carnegie Mellon or a Renssalaer or his state university which is glad to have him and where he will get a fine education - not a fate worse than death."

True... but it certainly does make a case for ethnic or racial grievance in the USA! The joys of diversity at work!! This whole discusssion and much anger could be dissipated if we just stayed clear of:

1) rapid demographic transformations

2) 1-way massive population trasnfers - aka colonization (but the population of the West is too afraid to admit as much to themselves when it happens to them)

3) multiculturalism - or the thing that has never really historically worked on any territory except decaying empires - and instead we enforced cultural assimilation which at least has a remote shot of working with racially diverse populations

4) The pretense that borders are historical/semi-mythical inventions with no real purpose

We don't need to figure out who has the biggest penis in order to avoid A LOT of unnecessary trouble!!

P.S. And yes I realize with respect that number 4 that it does not fully apply to countries that had borders imposed on them from the outside (ex. much of Africa and Middle East), or decaying, almost end-of-life empires

Much of the US University system is built on status mongering and idiocy like women's studies, art, etc. [Instead of practical training in how to draw, and so on.] In addition, there is lots of status-enhancements for guys like football, designed to maximize their sexual attractiveness to the most desirable and available women (18-22). A woman of 18 is better than one of 36, in sexual desire. Lets face it.

But Epinshade and others have shown that Ivies discriminate against rural, White, conservative kids with higher grades, test scores, and the like in favor of NAMs. If you think about what an Ivy is, this makes sense.

An Ivy league university, and all US universities, are social clubs with a learning annex attached. The primary function is to create alumni networks that increase pay for the alumni and extract donations and money (directed by influential alumni) to the Universities run mostly by tenured Professors. [See the firing of Larry Summers, showing where the power lies -- with professors.]

Universities are however on the cusp of being mostly eliminated. Distance learning, MITx, Stanford's web-courses, etc. allow many (not all) students to get certification for cheap, from a top-ranked university (which in turn becomes the Amazon of learning). I expect European universities in and around CERN, and other endeavors to jump on board.

For now, certification/alumni power-groups of being a university grad from a top-rank university has been the price of admission into the upper class. As noted above, as China rises, and takes away a lot of this (particularly Wall Street hedging, commodities trading, and the like) expect to see power shift to more entrepreneurial activities.

Suppose you could provide a DNA-altering drug that could raise IQ by say, 20 points? How much money could you make? Would it be higher than the global narcotics trade? Would you be richer and more powerful than a capitalist-crony using political influence like Carlos Slim?

A follow up, Jews and Asians during the 20th Century were the critical components of "big" science and technology, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Einstein, etc. for the atomic bomb, the H-bomb, the laser, and commercial applications (Walkman, CD players, etc.)

HOWEVER, if big science falls apart under funding pressures from "diverse" constituencies demanding payouts, and China's hideous vulnerability to imported food and fuel and fuel prices (i.e. oil has to be cheap enough to ship across oceans to make those cheap sneakers affordable) ...

The future belongs to Scots-Irish (and American German) tinkerers. Those guys in garages doing stuff.

Reading this, Unz concludes that currently white gentiles perform the best once admitted to Harvard, Asians next, and Jews by far the worst.

I hate to say this, but this reflects my business dealings with Jews. Once the deal is closed and they figure they have it in the bag, they underperform, evade, etc, by my standards, at least.

I always have to make sure I maintain strong, obvious recourse when dealing with Jews. You do get good performance out of them then, there just needs to be a sword of Damocles over their heads.

Their performance at Harvard is perhaps like this. Once in, it is pretty hard to flunk out, so the deal, getting a Harvard degree, is pretty much done from the time you get accepted and keep paying your tuition, don't do anything egregious.

I suppose the way I wrote this up could sound like a criticism of Jews, but I don't think it is. Just reflects a different reality in their (sub)culture. Once a deal is done, no point in gilding the lily, time to move on to next deal.

But it is a good thing to be aware of when dealing with them, they are calibrated a little differently than the typical non-Jewish white.

"The point of sports isn't getting into the NFL. It's about instilling other qualities, like physical courage, teamwork, and persistence under adversity."

This may be true of the truly amateur sports such as college fencing or crew where there's absolutely no money in the sport. I used to poo poo the value of athletics until my daughter became involved and then I saw that the character building aspects of athletics are very real and tangible.

But the big college basketball and football programs are essentially businesses that have nothing to do with the academic program of the institution. They should just do away with the sham that the players are students. Even if they have the academic ability (many don't) they are required to spend so much time practicing for their sport that they can't maintain a real academic schedule, especially not in any demanding major. How many Big 10 football players are pre-meds?

Most Jewish people who convert to Christianity choose the Anglican/Episcopal denomination. The Episcopal church in America is redolent of North Eastern US old money ... very Ivy League-y.

I suspect that Larry Auster is an Episcopalian.

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A follow up, Jews and Asians during the 20th Century were the critical components of "big" science and technology, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Einstein, etc. for the atomic bomb, the H-bomb, the laser, and commercial applications (Walkman, CD players, etc.)

But Jewish or Asian people have not dominated aviation, missiles, or space technology thus far.

I read a biography of President Harry Truman. The bio said that Pres. Truman had an encounter with Robert Oppenheimer, in which Oppenheimer wished aloud that he had never been involved with the atomic bomb. Truman more or less told Oppenheimer to shut up and quit blubbering.

"He revisits his theory here of the malleability of IQ while positing that Jewish wordsum-derived IQ is 109, but that Americans of English, Welsh, Scottish, Swedish, and Catholic Irish ancestry average 104 while whites in the Episcopal church exceeded Jews."

Hey, that's good for English, Welsh, etc., etc., and Episcopalians, but look at it another way; that means that most of the rest of you, your median IQ being 100, are almost as stupid as I am.

"Remember, if not for legacy and athlete preferences the number of white gentiles would be tiny at Harvard Yale and Princeton."

Even if true which I don't think Unz would agree with, he certainly says that this would not be true if slots were allocated in accordance with talent as revealed by the PSAT, which he chooses as the fairest measure, not distorted by over-preparation. Their proportion would at least double over that that currently exists.

I don't understand why many of you complain about the Ivies so much. You risk coming across as a bunch of whiners -- either of the "life oughta be fair" kind, or of the "why didn't *I* get into Yale?" type. Don't you know -- and this is Acting Class 101, kids -- that whining puts you in a position of weakness? And so long as you're weak, they're strong.

Far better to laugh at the whole Ivy thing. The next time some puffed-up person drops the fact that he/she went to Harvard, explode in mirth. Then apologize (not really) by saying something like, "I'm sorry, it's just that you really seemed to think that having gone to Harvard is (more suppressed giggling) something to be proud of!" Then dissolve in laughter and tears.

Mock the Ivies, don't whine about 'em.

It never hurts to remember that well-connected, know-it-all, pretentious, cocksure Ivy types have been behind nearly all the great screwups in recent American history.

One of the best things that could happen to this country: if people would stop taking the "Ivy" thing so damn seriously.

Agree with Sunbeam and few others above on one big point. It isn't just about IQs and test scores. In my experience, Jews and Asians have often *wanted* it -- admission to fancy schools, acquisition of gold-plated diplomas -- a lot more than many of the white Christians I've known have. Many of them are really focused on education, achievement, schools, degrees. If you don't give as much of a shit about these things as they do, they're going to stampede all over you.

It may well work differently in math, science, engineering, etc, where I guess more processing power is always better. But in the liberal arts, once you're possession of enough brains, 90% of what determines outcomes is drive, persistence and luck.

For better or worse, there is conspicuous evidence of discrimination against non-Jewish whites. There is no evidence that the discrimination is explicit or intentional. However, it is very clear that college admission policies have that effect. See "The Roots of White Anxiety" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19douthat.html?_r=0). A few quotes (but read it all).

"Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-length study of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week on the conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the working-class."

"This was particularly pronounced among the private colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications."

"But cultural biases seem to be at work as well. Nieli highlights one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”"

"This provides statistical confirmation for what alumni of highly selective universities already know. The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts."

I don't think the administrator have an explicit intent to exclude non-Jewish whites. They would be just as biased against a Jewish kid from Nebraska who excelled in ROTC. However, the effect of elite admission preferences is a deep de facto bias.

The two greatest scientific/technological accomplishments of America in the 20th century were the atomic bomb and the lending on the Moon, and most of the scientists who worked on both projects were Europeans by birth. Most of the top rocket scientists on the Apollo Project were Germans by birth, brough to the U.S at the end of WWII by Project Paperclip.

Regarding the moon landing (for sure), I don't believe this turns out to be true. Awhile back I read a history of NASA organization and culture, funded by NASA, as part of "how do we figure out why we are no longer so effective". Interesting stats. Sure there were about 100 very influential "bend-tin" Germans. But by about the time of the Navajo, American aerospace was starting to pull ahead of the Germans in some areas; and it wasn't like the Germans actually did the whole Apollo program.

LBJ agreed to keep Apollo and NASA alive, but made a deal that no NASA center would be north of the Mason Dixon line. It was part of his program for rebuilding the South. Statistically the majority of NASA's science/engineering workers on the Apollo program were from small colleges in the South or from Canada (Canada had basically shut down it aerospace industry, which had been relatively large after WWII, sometime in the 50s; perfect timing.)

It's also worth remembering that before WWII there was not the association we have today between universities and technical accomplishment. (Much of that is due to Vannevar Bush, FDR's science advisor.) Many engineers got their "graduate training" in large industrial research labs. Grad schools didn't become the pipelines to tech industry they are today until after WWII. Many of the US engineers, like the Germans, learned a great deal in various technical capacities during WWII that were not associated with universities.

About the atomic program, I once asked the guy who oversaw the Los Alamos computing effort for the bomb (Dr Hamming, of code and numerical analysis fame, working on IBM tab shop equipment), who we had that really made the bomb happen. He replied instantly, "Union Carbide and DuPont".

Keep in mind that the Jews have not suddenly turned stupid, just not as over-represented as before. For example, Unz gives the Jewish % of National Merit Scholars in Pennsylvania (my state) in 2012 as 9%, whereas Jews are only something like 2.5% of the total PA population. So, based on academic merit, the Jews should be 3 or 4 x over-represented at the Ivies, but instead they are 8 or 10 x their % in the general population.

Using general population statistics as a starting point is deceptive. In the age 18 cohort that takes the test, what is the % of pure blooded Jews? The Jewish female Nation Merit Finalist of a generation ago (back when Jews were maybe 1/4 of the total) has gotten married late in life (if at all) and probably has an average of 1.x children. Around half her male counterparts have married sexy but not so smart blonds (or at least non-Jews). So I would bet that it is even less that 2.5%.

This is all a zero-sum game. If the Jews (and the Blacks and Hispanics) are the "winners" in this scheme, who are the losers? In part, white conservative Christians - even though American admissions put a big premium on leadership roles (they are hoping for students to be future politicians who will send money their way) , being a leader of a "disfavored" organization (not the American Nazi Party but something as seemingly innocuous as Future Farmers of America or Campus Crusade for Christ) actually HURTS your chances of getting in with the liberal admissions office staff. Much better to be head of the Gay-Straight Alliance or the local branch of the Sandanistas. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. Or as Mao said, "Better Red than expert."

But I think the real losers are the Asians. In "pure merit" type places such as the admission-by-test NY high schools they are already the majority but their numbers in the Ivies have been stuck in the teens for 30 years even as they have come to dominate all high g loaded measures. Why aren't they crying bloody murder? Or if they are, why are these cries being completely ignored in the media? Where are the "Asian power" blogs? I don't buy that it's merely a Jewish conspiracy.

"Far better to laugh at the whole Ivy thing. The next time some puffed-up person drops the fact that he/she went to Harvard, explode in mirth. Then apologize (not really) by saying something like, "I'm sorry, it's just that you really seemed to think that having gone to Harvard is (more suppressed giggling) something to be proud of!" Then dissolve in laughter and tears. "

Unless you truly believed that in your heart, it would come across as insecure and pathetic. And nobody believes it in their heart.

"It isn't just about IQs and test scores. In my experience, Jews and "Asians have often *wanted* it -- admission to fancy schools, acquisition of gold-plated diplomas -- a lot more than many of the white Christians I've known have. Many of them are really focused on education, achievement, schools, degrees. If you don't give as much of a shit about these things as they do, they're going to stampede all over you."

This notion is contradicted by Unz's evidence in the article. Jewish students today are not getting significantly higher grades and test scores than whites. They appear to be much less academically motivated than Jews of a generation or two ago, when they were a more marginalized, striving group. Absent differences in academic and career drive, the question of why high SAT scoring Jews are eight times more likely to get into Harvard than high SAT scoring gentiles is germane.

"Far better to laugh at the whole Ivy thing."

Laughing off the Ivy school thing for liberal arts majors is one thing. For those who aspire to work in high finance -- and many gentiles do -- Ivy schools are about the only ticket. It isn't so easy to laugh your way into Goldman Sachs.

"It never hurts to remember that well-connected, know-it-all, pretentious, cocksure Ivy types have been behind nearly all the great screwups in recent American history."

As Unz alludes to, the culture of corruption on Wall Street and the culture of corruption in Ivy schools are two sides of the same coin. Cleaning up the corrupt culture at Harvard may contribute to cleaning up the corrupt culture on Wall Street. This isn't simply an issue of "I wish my kid could get into Harvard"; it's a matter of recognizing that the power elite in America are significantly more corrupt than the power elite in, say, Europe. Unz's claim that the uber-rich Chinese send their not-so-brilliant kids to elite American universities because they can more easily purchase their way into them than into elite Chinese universities is shocking.

Unz himself refers to a WSJ article that "described the extreme academic intensity at several predominantly Asian high schools in Cupertino and other towns in Silicon Valley, and the resulting exodus of white students, who preferred to avoid such an exceptionally focused and competitive academic environment, which included such severe educational tension." Ie., many of the white kids didn't have the kind of intense drive that many of the Asian kids did. Seems to substantiate my point, which is merely that wanting it bad, and wanting it REAL bad, plays a big role in making it.

Dirk: "The culture of corruption on Wall Street and the culture of corruption in Ivy schools are two sides of the same coin."

Sure. That said: If you don't think the Ivies were corrupt, say, 40 years ago, you're nuts. Unz's article makes it clear that the intensity level has been cranked up a bunch of notches since. But the mess he's describing echoes the one I witnessed there back in the mid-'70s.

Also: You're going to change this situation how exactly? By trying to engage in debate with the elites? Word to the wise: The elites own the debate hall.

That said, I'm all for the regular-people crowd sharing info and insights about the corruptness of our elites. God bless the internet for letting us connect with each other.

It isn't just about IQs and test scores. In my experience, Jews and Asians have often *wanted* it -- admission to fancy schools, acquisition of gold-plated diplomas -- a lot more than many of the white Christians I've known have. Many of them are really focused on education, achievement, schools, degrees. If you don't give as much of a shit about these things as they do, they're going to stampede all over you.

If that's your complicated way of saying that it's all right for them to game the system to their advantage just because they "want it more", then I'm here to tell you that you are wrong.

The belief that the intensity of your feelings trumps the general rules of morality is the hallmark of liberal thought - and it's wrong. It's factually and morally wrong.

This garbage is a staple of the HBD blogs - but it is garbage all the same. Richard Lynn looked at all the IQ data available on American Jews and concluded that their verbal IQ is about 107. Their "overall" IQ being a combination of verbal plus math and spatial, it is probable that the average IQ of American Jews is about 104.

I'm currently a quarter of the way through I Am Charlotte Simmons, on Steve's recommendation. If our "elite" universities are even 10% as corrupt and hedonistic as the one described in the book, I see only one proportionate solution: nuke every last one of them, and strew salt in the ashes to make sure nothing grows back.

Anonymous: "If that's your complicated way of saying that it's all right for them to game the system to their advantage just because they "want it more", then I'm here to tell you that you are wrong."

Your anger (or something) has blinded you to the difference between a descriptive phrase, which is what I wrote, and a moral argument, which I didn't write. Wanting it more makes a difference where outcomes go -- that's all I said.

Funnily enough, "wanting it more" seems to affect outcomes in most fields. Such is life, right? I don't know why some in the crowd here seem to think that it wouldn't (and shouldn't) be the case where getting-into-an-elite-college goes.

Unz has convinced me that we Jews are indeed overrepresented at HYP, relative to what would obtain in a purely meritocratic world. Just not by as much as he thinks; I'd say he's off by a factor of about three or four.

Here's my rationale. His figures on Jewish population at HYP come from campus Hillel, a fine organization but nonetheless one with a fundraising incentive to report as large as possible a target population. If Hillel reported only the number of students who have actually stepped through its doors, that would be a number ten times smaller. So Hillel relies on a lot of guesswork, a very expansive interpretation of what a Jewish family name is, and happily counts kids who have one Jewish parent and zero interest or even awareness in things Jewish.

The denominator, meanwhile, comes from those censuses of Jewish names gleaned from the lists of National Merit semifinalists and champions of prestigious academic competitions. Here we run into several major sources of undercounting. First, you have kids with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Hillel (and every rabbi too) counts these as Jewish, but they won't have Jewish family names. With intermarriage running at 50%, you have right there a 25% undercount. Second, many many Jews have adopted Anglo-Saxonish names. If you read through the membership list of my synagogue you might conclude only about half of us are Jewish! Third, the propensity to adopt "Anglo" names is correlated negatively with religious observance, which is in turn correlated negatively with intelligence and "elitehood". Fourth, a lot of names are 100% Jewish but someone unfamiliar with Hebrew (and to some extent Yiddish, Russian and Polish) would miss them: Zilka, Soffer, Katz, Shoob, Harpaz...

To be sure, even all these considerations together don't fully bridge the gap: it's clear as day that HYP seem to prefer Jews to Asians. As for preferring Jews to non-Jewish whites: maybe, and it depends on whether you consider a half-Jewish kid Jewish or "white".

Other than this, the article is great, and I'm forwarding it to lots of people.And I will mention in passing that Unz himself, when weighing the merits of his various admissions ideas, betrays a clear aversion to having Too Many Asians at your college.

In response to International Jew's methodological comments, what it sounds like is that there's a need to use surname counting as well to come up with the percent of Jewish surnames at a college. This shouldn't be impossible to find from say recent alumni catalogues or from graduation programs. HYP schools have graduation rates of around 95+% so graduation is pretty much equal to admission.

“When lower-class whites are matched with lower-class blacks and other non-whites the degree of the non-white advantage becomes astronomical: lower-class Asian applicants are seven times as likely to be accepted to the competitive private institutions as similarly qualified whites, lower-class Hispanic applicants eight times as likely, and lower-class blacks ten times as likely. These are enormous differences and reflect the fact that lower-class whites were rarely accepted to the private institutions Espenshade and Radford surveyed. Their diversity-enhancement value was obviously rated very low.”

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